In recent years society has become increasingly dependent on the use of electronic data communication to deliver messages and information. As a result of this increased dependency, it has become increasingly important to have access to such media of communications wherever one may be.
One of the most popular media of electronic communication in recent years is the facsimile machine. These machines have now become commonplace in large and small businesses and in homes. The traditional facsimile machine has been a bulky nonportable machine that requires the user to prepare a paper document to be fed to the machine; the machine then scans and transmits the document to a similar machine.
Although mobile battery powered facsimile machines exist, these machines also tend to be bulky and cumbersome to transport. Rather than carry them around, most people tend to rely on the use of a fixed facsimile machine. When traveling, it is commonplace to have to pay to use a machine provided by a hotel or copy center.
Another area in which demand has grown in recent years is the paging industry. Pagers come in different models, some of which simply "beep", and others which display a specific number or message on a small screen. These pagers usually require a person seeking to activate another's pager to telephone a paging terminal and identify the pager to be activated. The paging terminal then sends out a radio frequency signal and activates the specified pager. With some pagers, the transmitted message can include alphanumeric messages. The person sending such a message is usually required to call up a service provider and to recite the message. The service provider keys in the message into a paging terminal which in turn delivers the desired message to the pager by radio signals.
There is thus a need for a portable handheld device for communicating alphanumeric messages to facsimile machines.
There is further a need to provide a portable handheld message transmitter capable of accessing paging terminals and communicating data required to direct a paging terminal to activate a desired pager and send a desired message thereto. There is also a need for a character transmission protocol for communicating alphanumeric character between a message transmitter and a data receiving host and to provide a transmitter capable of communicating such a protocol and a receiver for receiving such a protocol.
Finally, there is a need for a portable handheld message transmitter for communicating with a number of message receiving hosts having differing data communication types.